Ghosts of our Fathers
by Rainey Dae
Summary: Hermione stays at Hogwarts over the summer and, aged by an accident with a time-turner, begins a relationship with a werewolf professor and a man turned dog.
1. Dog souls

The first thing I decided that morning was that I was keeping my job. I had packed half of my belongings away with practiced speed when it hit me how long I'd been running away. I thought about Harry first, who never had a defense against the dark arts teacher, and I thought about Dumbledore, and then, with rust peeling away from my heart, I thought about Sirius, a free man.

Albus Dumbledore had come into my office twenty minutes prior, first to tell me that I was welcome to stay on as a professor, but that there would be some complaints from parents, as the details of my condition had been leaked first to the Slytherin house, and then to the rest of the school. I began packing mentally, having only unpacked some baggage the night before. Then he told me the news, that Sirius had been kissed, and not by a beautiful woman. I felt the bottom drop out of my stomach, but Albus made it clear that there was more to the story. I listened.

He had woken up after a restorative draught in the hospital wing, and I could see in my mind the waxy death mask of his face break into a smile. "My soul?" was all he said, and then he transformed into a dog, and Minerva translated what he had said in the language of tame animals. "Blacks don't have souls. Dogs don't have souls. I don't have a soul." An ambiguous statement in four wags of his tail and one pant of his tongue.

Having received the fullest penalty the law of the wizarding world had to offer, Sirius had jumped down from the hospital bed and peed on the hospital wing's stone floor. He was, as he had believed himself as a young man, beyond the law.

I went to see him then, still a dog, greeting me with a slow wag of his tail. Something told me, seeing him then, that he had spoken his last words as a man.


	2. Yes, they're drinking fireball

Some people quit drinking because they've seen the worst that alcohol has to offer. Hermione quit drinking because she had seen the best of it.

Hermione awoke that morning to the sight of a large black dog dragging a bottle of fireball through the Gryffindor common room. She had fallen asleep in a book again, at one of the many desks pressed against the walls.

"Do you need any help with that?" she asked. The dog wagged his tail, panted his tongue (the universal dog language for 'Yes') and licked at the paper seal around the neck of the bottle. Hermione was not a girl to deny a dog his pleasures, so she opened the bottle and poured some into a bowl. The dog looked at her expectantly, sitting back on his haunches.

"What are you waiting for?" She asked, and then she heard a voice pierce through the dog's body language. He stopped panting and drew his tongue halfway back into his head.

"I don't drink alone," said the voice, the voice of a young man. Hermione had a vision then, of a shaggy black-haired man standing where the dog sat, a shot glass in one hand. "We have something to talk about, Hermione." And in the ambiguous language of dogs, she heard the words "Girl who saves me" overlaid across her name.

Hermione had been at Hogwarts for almost a month now of the summer break. She had opted for summer courses rather than repeating the fiasco with the time-turner, but she had not yet returned the necklace to the Ministry of Magic. Every time she tried, a stern, McGonigal-like figure in Hermione's mind pointed to the list of classes for next year. "What about that one? You're going to take that one, aren't you?"

Hermione sighed and poured herself a drink. It was her first time. "Cheers," she said, clinking her tumbler against the dog's bowl and taking a sip. She cringed. The dog laughed at her then, and eager lapped at his own portion.

"You're not very nice," said Hermione, taking another sip. The dog stopped wagging his tail and padded around her nervously. "Oh, fine," said Hermione. I forgive you.

"Good," said the dog, sitting down and licking whiskey off his nose.

Hermione began to feel warm, then. Warm and bad.

Bad like motorcycle jackets and bicycles without helmets and that little bit of cocaine she had snorted in high school.

She had taken it to study.

"What did you want to talk to me about, Mr. Black?" She asked, still sitting on the floor.

The dog began to pace across the floor again, head down, psychotic, and Hermione began to slide back in time.

"Do you believe in ghosts, Hermione?" Asked the young man, also pacing.

"I've seen ghosts," said Hermione, somewhat crossly. She was trying to read, in this vision of the past, her on the couch, the man Black distracting her.

"What about..." the dog transformed into a man, then, for a moment. "Ghosts of our fathers?"

He shuddered and seemed to collapse back into a dog, and Hermione was pulled back into the present.

"That woman you're talking to," Hermione asked, astute as always, "Is she a ghost of my father?"

The dog nodded, sat once again in front of his bowl of whiskey, licked his nose.

The young man Sirius sat down on the couch and took a swig from the bottle in his hand.

The dog did the same, and Hermione sat beside him, feeling an irascible urge to make her transparency of the past line up with the present. She had straight brown hair, in the past, and red rectangular glasses. The woman with glasses reached for the bottle, so Hermione took a sip of her own. They went on like that, back and forth, for a few minutes in silence.


	3. Seven-hundred and twenty

You never forget a word you misuse. The word 'irascible,' for example, used in the last chapter to mean 'undeniable and unyielding,' actually means 'irritable.'

Hermione Granger once misused the word 'evil.' She used it to describe Sirius Black. That was before he was cornered and kissed by dementors and, now soulless, explained to Albus Dumbledore how he had not actually been the Potter's secret keeper.

 _Details,_ thought Hermione. _Details that cost souls._

"You're not really soulless, are you Sirius?" asked Hermione.

"Blacks don't have souls," came the voice of the young man, but it echoed around the common room as if to say it no longer rang true.

"You wouldn't be like this if you didn't have a soul," said Hermione, drunk. "I've read about it," she said, still drunk, "in books."

Sirius turned around on the couch as if to lie down, but then continued turning to face Hermione. He touched the time turner around her neck with his nose. She touched it with her hand. "How did you know about that?"

She took it out from behind her shirt and looked at it. An idea flashed through her mind. She had frequent visions. This one was of the night they rescued (The word now was rescued, instead of lost) Sirius. They went back in time three hours and produced a patronus to chase away the dementors.

"Well," She said, drunk, "Let's try it." She looped the chain around the dog's neck and did a calculation in the margin of her book. It would take seven-hundred and twenty hours.

"One," she said. "Two, three, four," then she took out her wand and said "Count me, seven-hundred and twenty."

The time turner spun of its own accord then, and she and Sirius appeared in the Gryffindor common room seven-hundred and thirty days into the past.


End file.
